The use of manufactured composite wood and plastic planking for decks, ceilings and wall coverings is becoming more and more common. Such planks frequently are manufactured with slots formed into the lateral sides to receive clamps, to obviate the need to drill through the plank for installation, which would expose the plank interior to water and rotting.
The planking requires a supporting substructure to install to, such as floor or ceiling joists, or wall studs or stringers. Conventional installation methods require a large number of clips to be fastened to the substructure individually. This conventional method is time consuming, difficult to ensure quality control, and not very strong or reliable—especially in high-wind weather—because the clips are not interconnected to be mutually supporting.
Composite planks are also less combustible, thus they are being used more frequently for construction of deck surrounds on structures in wildfire-prone areas. This often includes the use of steel or aluminum girder substructures, which creates a fireproof or fire resistant barrier around the structure.
The inventor previously developed an improved system using a strip of mounting clips mountable to a floor joist, which is described in U.S. Pat. No. 8,146,303 (issued Apr. 3, 2012) but that system was not a complete solution. The clips are subject to distortion during installation, and the receiver-side tangs do not securely engage the plank slot sidewalls or back walls. Thus, although the planking is able to accept deadweight in an exterior flooring use, the planks are vulnerable to lifting in hurricane situations, and the system is not reliable for installations on vertical walls or ceilings. Also, the prior system does not provide for easy integration with steel or aluminum girder substructures. Furthermore, the prior system requires a specialized tool to engage the fastening tangs.
Thus, there is a need for a system to engage planks to a substructure which provides improved installation efficiency, improved performance in extreme weather, reliable installation on vertical and ceiling surfaces, greater compatibility with metal girder substructures, and does not require a proprietary tool.